I know, darlings. This is a movie blog. What am I doing talking about comics? But you know what? It's my blog, and I'm meeting you halfway. And who you gonna tell? WHO'S GONNA BELIEVE YOU?

That picture means nothing.

All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder

If you haven't read this, I commend your preserved innocence towards the whole Frank Miller lot. Because this thing is just full of mind fucks. The Batman of The Dark Knight Returns (might've been my first choice, if it weren't such a very confusing place to start a stand-alone movie)? He didn't get like that from years of brooding and face-punching and noir-ish monologues. He's just like that. The first we get of the cowl? He's kidnapping the recently-orphaned (and by recently, I mean, like, half an hour ago) Dick Grayson (age 12). He then spends real-world-time one year with the poor kid in the batmobile/rocket/fuck-you-whatever-the-fuck-else-I-say-it-is, slapping and growling at him and generally being an asshole of the highest order.

But, um, otherwise. This thing is full of gratuitous sex, impossible body parts, gore, traumatized children going sociopathic, Wonder Woman as a raging man-hater with a thing for a buffoonish Superman, and the Joker as a neo-nazi gangster. So, y'know. Just the sort of thing one'd pay ten bucks to see acted out by the latest European expat?

Also, of course, this glorious piece of Frank Miller gave us the phrase 'the goddamn Batman'.

2) You know, once upon a midnight dreary, I used to like Chelsea Handler. But then she started popping up in places outside of that talk show, and I realized she has the comic timing and improve skills of someone with neither of those things. So, to see her show up here, doing her standup/"woohoo-lookit-me-I'm-so-drunk-and-ca-ray-za-za-zay" schtick just kind of makes me pissy. On the other hand, old man.

3) I don't like Reese Witherspoon. Sometimes I do, but most days I don't. Something about the wholesome routine. Something about what appears to be her streak of putting herself in the middle of a whole lot of love triangles lately (Christ, lady, you can't have Christoph Waltz, Robert Pattinson, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson, Captain Kirk, and Tom Hardy all vying for your goddamn affections. It doesn't just work like that.)

4) I hate romantic talk. Shit like "this has been the most romantic night". It annoys me, children.

5) Tom Hardy. You have been the Most Violent Prisoner in The British Penal System. You have been one half of what I'm sure is a loving, committed relationship with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Who will be a Tinker-Tailor-Soldier, strike forced Spy division. You will be the goddamn guy that broke the goddamn Batman's goddamn back. This is not how we break into mainstream America.

6) Um. So. I keep forgetting this guy's name, because there's a million guys who're named Chris Something or Ryan Something or what have you, so he shall henceforth be known as Captain Kirk. Or Captain Sexy. Or Captain James T. Kirk-Spock (because they're a modern couple). Egads, what has Tumblr done to me?

7) Why is the fucking CIA just letting them blow each other up? In a motherfucking US city? Who is running our fucking federal task forces?

8) More people hanging out in upscale bars. I'll just be over here with my root beer and my half-high school education and all the financial benefits it allows me and my under-18 car sticker. Fuck the picture shows.

9) Well, at least they let Tom Hardy stay British.

10) Fire-sprinkler system? How fucking clever, Captain. Tom Hardy air-roofies your ass, and all you can think of is a slightly more advanced version of what middle schoolers got bored of in the goddamn 90s? You defeated the Kobayashi Maru, you son of a bitch. What would Spock say? Oh, that's right, nothing, because he'd be off filing for divorce already.

I, my good folks who let blog headlines tell them what to do, am in a quandarry. I spiffle. A kerfuffle. Um. Other nonsense words of similar implications. With double consonants.

I haven't seen a movie properly for quite a few weeks. It's...empty-making? Is that a thing? Too bad, it is now.

Maybe it's been the start of school. Maybe the extinguishment of my soul (the two go hand-in-hand, after all). Maybe it's been my sudden time-suck of a hobby, comic books (the DC reboot certainly isn't helping jack shit). Maybe it's some other shit I haven't had the foresight to pull out my ass. But, you know. As it goes.

So. I apologize for lack of worthwhile (or any) content. Because I can't very well turn this into a all-Nightwing-all-the-time blog. That's Tumblr territory. No, sir, all I can do is wait for that bit of movie-moodifying (word. Patented. As of now. Deal with it) to strike. I know. Baited breath.

Meanwhile, you all have been quite busy. I shall investigate! I SHALL!

Recently, I stuck my head out of Justice League International Vol. 1, ostensibly to blink out the pretty colors, and I looked around. I looked at all the DVDs I had stacked about my room, unwatched and dusting. I looked at my Netflix Queue, having barely noticed that it would soon be outsourced to some spelling-abomination called Qwikster. I looked at my local listings, realizing with some dismay that I missed the theatre run of Another Earth. I had, ladies and gentlefolk, not seen a movie properly in weeks.

So I busied myself on the internet, catching up with TIFF screenings and whatnot, combing through the backends of movie news sites, punching myself in the face for missing Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Columbiana (though, admittedly, that was more Irene's fault, that scheming bitch). I played catchup like nobody's business, my knowing compadres.

But something ate at me. Something at the back of my underdeveloped brain. Something blocked from full consciousness by internal speakers on constant replay of Amanda Palmer and David Bowie and Janelle Monae and all them bitches (my, I love name-checking). One day, when my internet was temporarily down because fuck you, internet, I sat to ponder this gnawing notion.

It had been triggered by the sudden intake of cinematic panic, surely? I went back to the print listings. I tried to place the inception (boom) of my ill-defined woes.

And then the magazines started screaming. It hit me like a pimp hand hits a ho.

Douchebags.

Douchebags everywhere.

And no, my smutty beloveds, not in the literal sense. In the holy-shit-there's-a-guy-in-a-goatee-and-he's-looking-right-at-me sense. Gentle readers, our movie screens have been overrun by smug.

Take Crazy Stupid Love. The main characters pick up chicks in an upscale bar with wall-sized windows and a special on appletinis. They define cool as layers of overpriced scarfs and man-rings. Sure, they go all itmeansnothingwithoutemotionalconnectionwaa at the end, but guys. The damage is done.

Which brings me to Ryan Gosling. Now, he's always struck me as douchey in a good way. Confident, but not offensively so. The douchebag you'd marry because, underneath it all, he really is kind of awesome. But he is, nonetheless, reeking of douchebaggery.

(note: this is based solely on...um, nothing)

From what I can tell of Drive, he spends the entire time in a Member's Only jacket, which, I don't care what nostalgia demands, is never good for anything or anybody, and can only bring sorrow to the world.

It's been a long time coming. One of my first posts was about how Iron Man was the new Scarface (blatant self-promotion, we meet again), and even before then (as in, my magnificent arrival on the blogosphere, because you know that's how you tell time, anyway), douchebag movies haven't exactly come and gone from the public consciousness. The Transformers movies have gone from innoffensive geek-wank to the ludicrous plotlines of 'which Victoria's Secret model will I devote the most time to?' to the part of Shia LaBeefz, who I refuse to take seriously because, come on, Even Stevens.

The arthouse, while always dominated by NYU grads with a tad too much money when it wasn't overun with The Foreigners, has recently seen a boom in post-collegiate mope-a-thons and rogueish anti-heroes, from Tiny Furniture and the entire mumblecore movement (although we must stop and acknowledge the gift it's given us in the form of Greta Gerwig) to the sustained popularity of George Clooney and Brad Pitt (I'm sorry, but the commercials for The Ideas of March and Moneyball make me want to blackmail those two into a fight to the death). Superhero movies have been overrun by the smug charisma of Chris Reynolds and Ryan Pine and...Jesus Christ, they all the look the same, don't they?

Even the Big Issue movies, like The Blind Side (I know, duh) reek of patronising Hollywood Liberals (forgive the Fox News slang) clucking their tongues at people who have yet to reach their superior, tofu-yoga-tea-orphans existences.

(The evolution of this post somehow went from regular douchebags to hipster douchebags, and for that I apologize. We will now wind back around to guys who fancy themselves nerds with inexplicably hot girlfriends)

Don't you miss the days when they were sidelined to Direct-to-DVD wastebins and mid-afternoon Comedy Central reruns? I do.

We must watch where we're going, future directors of the world. Everytime you wake up at night with a brilliant script idea, just remember: nobody cares about your painful breakup, and they certainly don't want to watch you contemplate it while staring out a rain-bombarded train window.

And already-established Hollywood bigwigs: no more cocky bastards who inexplicably succeed. No Entourage movie.

Good talk.

I'll be over here.

(if anyone would care to address this Serious Issue in a way that's not the shit of the land, be my guest)

Believe it or not, my pets (as, in my head, you're all ferrets I daringly rescued from the pound. It was epic), I wa sonce but a wee lass of 8-or-something. Carbon dating suggests I came into this world as an infant, but that's if you believe in that fancy-schmanzy evolution, which just don't add up, Mr. Scientist.

Anyway, as this squirming pile of baby, I spent an awful lot of time in front of the TV, Now, this consisted of public networks and Nickelodeon until, I don't know, Y2K, when we were suddenly the proud owners of basic cable. Whether the danger scared my parents straight, or the apocalypse actually happened and I made up this elaborate fantasy of 70+ channels to cope with the desolate wasteland that was once the world, it is not my place to decide. But in the end, we got Cartoon Network.

Ah, yes. Cartoon Network. My home turf. The network that shaped me into the webpage that flickers before you. How many hours did I spend huddled in front of Looney Tunes reruns, Ed, Edd, n' Eddy, WB transplants?

And then there were the TV movies. Yes, upon further reflection, CN and other channels of it's ilk (though far superior to any of them) took advantage of the sugar-high heroin that was primetime childrens' programming and subjected us to hundreds upon thousands of Scooby-Doo rehashings. What's New, Scooby Doo? A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Long have I been haunted by the question: if his name is Scooby-Doo, why does he always say it's "Scooby-Dooby-Doo!"? Is that his middle name? Does he have Tourettes? Is everyone else saying his name wrong to fuck with him? It seems like the kind of thing Fred would orchestrate. That asshole.

But. Right. We also got a shitload of TV movies. The one where they went to cyberspace. The one where they met those freaky goth-witch-whatever chicks. The one where they met, I don't know, Josie and the Pussycats. Actually, I don't know about that one. But probably.

One and all, they were terrible. Voice acting, animation, plot, dialogue, it was all like someone wrote it twenty years after their last joint. Somehow.

But then, my loves, but then. Came along a new Scooby-Doo adventure. At first, it seemed like any old battle the gang would fight on a weekly basis. Go to a Louisiana plantation (or something). Discover a mystery. Solve the mystery. Unmask the mask. Go home.

Except I think not.

Because the eponymous zombies? They're not the boat driver. They're not the farmhand. They're not the the butler. They're fucking zombies.

And then Fred tore off their fucking heads.

You see, the gang has been apart for awhile. Having careers and what-have-you. So they decide the dust off the ol' Mystery Machine and have a bit of reunion. Old friends, harmless mysteries, fetching Southern belles, BUT WAIT ONE FUCKING MINUTE.

They're adults now. They must deal with adult mysteries. Like the terrifying scribbles on the old plantation walls. And voodoo guys. And slaughtered pilgrims. And cat ladies. And the fucking zombies.

My memory is fuzzy on the specifics. But I remember pissing my pants. I remember a trailer featuring 'O Fortuna'. I remember Scooby and Shaggy getting stuck in a grave with a zombie and genuinely being afraid for them. This is not childhood nerves. Even then, I had a weary relationship with these movies. But this one? This one was hardcore.

So, yes, I know, gentle readers o mine, this has nothing to do with anything. But we'll be back to normal programming once school kung-fu's me into semi-regular sleeping habits. But, for now, if you don't particularly care about comic book events, or comic books proper, you can just, you know, scurry along. Watch some cat videos. Whatever.

So. DC. We've come to this. Hey, man, I get it. The 21st century hasn't been kind to the comic book industry. What with people turning to the televisions and the internets and the iPods and that newfangled hippity-hop for their entertainment purposes. Even you, the biggest name in comics (besides Marvel, but pfft, Marvel) is forced to go big or go home. You've killed everyone. You've brought them back to life.

But now.

This.

A reboot.

Of everything.

You asshole.

Do you have ANY FUCKING IDEA what a pain in the ass it is to get into your comics? You've got 52 fucking Earths, and they each get their own versions of the same damn people. I've been into comics for a year, and I've barely cracked the impenetrable fortress that is Batman's continuity, forget about the rest of the bunch. I've neglected Vertigo. The Runaways (okay, Marvel, you get one). I go on vacation for a week, and suddenly Dick Grayson's the new Batman?

So now you're telling me, with the introduction of the Flashpoint universe, EVERYTHING I'VE SWEATED OVER IS OFFICIALLY NULL AND FUCKING VOID?

You bitches can't just be all, oh, wait, never mind, Barbara Gordon's Batgirl again. Because you know why? That would imply that the Killing Joke never happened. I will not stand for a world where the Killing Joke never happened.

Flashpoint is confusing enough.

I get that this is partially why you're rebooting, that the DCU has gotten too convulated with all the Post/Pre-Crisis nonsense, but for fuck's sake, my brain will go numb if I have to read one more Bruce Wayne origin story.

Here in the old armpit, we got a bit of the aftershock. Of course, it lasted for two minutes, nothing fell over, and my sister said she didn't feel anything, so I spent the succeeding half hour googling symptoms of schizophrenia.

In case you don't know, C,S,L (see what happens? SEE!?) is about Steve Carell, a hapless, loveable old schlub whose wife, Julianne Moore, leaves him for being a boner-killer (or whatever). After several nights depressing the patrons of one of those high-end singles bars I like to think homeless girls can reliably go to for free drinks, he is recruited by Ryan Gosling, a douchebag, to also be a douchebag. But then Ryan Gosling meets Emma Stone, a soon-to-be lawyer with a badass friend, Liza Lapira, and likes her or whatever. And then something about Carell and Moore's kid being in love with his babysitter. And everyone hates Kevin Bacon. The end.

But let's look at said babysitter-loving son. His name is Robbie, and he's played by Jonah Bobo (quiet, you in the back). Here's a kid who, hardcore and with no irony, believes in true love. Quite.

Now, if you'll recall, 500 Days of Summer is a movie. What's more, it's a romantic comedy about a dude who believes in true love, and hooks up with a chick who doesn't. This dude's played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who, as I chronicled, has been playing this same dude his entire career. But let's, for a minute, pretend that my brilliant theory is *l'horreur* not enitrely accurate.

Because this Robbie kid is one mid-afternoon viewing of the Graduate away from being Tom Hanson. And, hell, maybe that was just a deleted scene.

Who knows? Maybe he changed his name to distance himself from a Noodle Incident. Maybe he witnessed the group murder of Kevin Bacon, because fuck that guy. Maybe his parents miraculously birthed a precocious little shit who looks like Chloe Moretz. You don't know.

Ah, yes. It's that time of the month. No, not that one, piggish and/or sensitive menfolk. The one where I make excuses for the long stretches of not doing anything. I know. You're so disappointed.

It's not that I don't care, people. Truly, I love you more than my own hypothetical alien spawn. Yo.

It's just that, in the summertime, kids, while I have all the time the American education system allots, I have neither the patience, energy, or incentive to do jack shit about it. During the year, us young folk bitch about all the amazing shit we're gonna do when summer comes around, because we're not yet affected by what I assume in the summerless, soulless, tax-and-health-insurance-filled world of adulthood. Seriously, I don't envy you fuckers. No summer vacation? Three days off in the year? Fucking cubicles?

ANYWAYS. I have some things to say while I'm here.

1) Darren Criss? The one all you assholes have been drooling over? You don't know. You don't know SHIT. Because if you did know shit, you'd know noto credit him as Glee's Magical Homosexual Blaine Whatshisface. You'd know that he was, in fact, Harry Freakin' Potter.

2) The Great White Dopeness himself as bestowed upon me the honor of WINNA in his recent contest. Of course, I deserved it.

3) I won't be here for the better part of next month, due to Seattle shit I don't expect you children to understand.

-It was bound to happen. A movie was sure to show up that made me shake my head towards my previous defenses of Richard Kelly. Because he doesn't have the monopoly on mind-fuck movies. It's possible to do it right, people.

-Because this? This is three different realities. Things happen that are scary, but then they're funny, and not absurd funny, funny like it's not taking itself too seriously. Nobody makes obscure, unexplained comments about death. Everything gets explained in some form or another, but there's still room for discussion. The performances are amazeballs, including Ryan Reynolds, who nobody can accuse of being a bad actor, but a very, very bland one (but not here!), Melissa McCarthy (who's really underrated as a straight-up dramatic actress), and Hope Davis (yay).

-And yet, the normal interactions aren't unsettling, like David Lynch.

You see, my loves, my darlings, lights of my life, whenever I come into a dilemma, and the general internet proves to be maddeningly unhelpful, I turn to you, my most trusted audience. Especially you. You're my favorite.

So in this dilemma, I'm flying the notoriously fuck-you airline Continental. Now, I haven't flown since before the company's merger with United, which, from what I hear, is Armegeddon with a bathroom. The problem is, I can't find any in-flight information.

So what I want to know, my dears, is, if you have flown this particular airline, coach, on a roughly 5 hour flight, at around 9 in the morning (Eastern time), what did you or did you not have to pay for? Like, was the food free, was there coffee, did you need a credit card for the luxury of Two and a Half Men reruns, etc. What I'm asking you is do I've got to spend five hours twiddling my thumbs, entertainmentless, coffeeless, hopeless?

Well, Andrew has made hisself a blogathon in light of the impending Emmy nominations. You can find some of that shit here, and I'm incredibly early on this, I a, but fuck it, I'll be gone most of August, I can't keep up.

ANYWAY. What's my favorite episode of the past TV season?

Community. "Paradigms of Human Memory". Look into the eyes of the abyss. Later.

-This is a movie where the characters break the fourth wall to argue about who, exactly, is the main character. Technically, I should love it with all my heart. It's among the handful of movies I knew as a 13-year-old just discovering Wikipedia, by cast and subject matter rather than first-hand knowledge (with availability like it was at the time). It was among the ones that I would defend to the death rather than go out and try to find a copy of somewhere in the back of Blockbuster.

-In said argument, between Macauley Culkin's Michael Alig and Seth Green's James St. James, I wish Green had won. Only a narrative presence in the beginning and end, he is a much more interesting protaganist than Culkin, who's Alig is a fey, obnoxious little twit, cheerfully trying to break into the club scene before succeeding into an even more aggravatingly bright world of excess and coke. Doing the most awkward impression of a quasi-drag queen, Culkin is either incredibly good at portraying the dead-eyed, Bret Easton Ellis-ish monotony of the club kid scene, or embarassingly bad at showing the fabulous descent of the same.

-Meanwhile, Green, while initially going about the same stiff showboating as Culkin, playing his mentor-turned-sidekick, is, um, much better. Wry, the only truly entertaining one in the bunch.

-The movie is shot in digital, making it ugly and empty and hyper-observant of every pimply chin and Cheeto-stained carpet. Which I guess makes sense, if it's really trying to make its entire universe as flat and baffling as possible.

-The rest of the acting ranges from non-existant (Chloe Sevigny) to stiff (guy from My So-Called Life) to fine, I guess (Wilmer Valderama).

-It's extremely unpleasant if you're looking for a movie without subtitles for once (like me), possibly a gritty look at the precious little downfall of The Factory's wannabe-second-comers, possibly just an ironic way to pass the time and mock some stiff dialogue. Go ahead, it could've been worse.

-This is one of those movies where a bunch of pretty, rich people spend most of their time making deep, mumbled declarations of loneliness, regret, and misery. It would be insufferably twee if it weren't for the charisma of the actors (Christopher Plummer, especially, makes you rue all the parts he never took, because you know those movies might've been twice as amazing as they were).

-Was I the only one baffled at why the dog kept asking Ewan McGregor if they were married yet?

-Speaking of which, him, that dog, and Melanie Laurent make the world's most motherfucking adorable little unit. It's not fair. It's just not fair.

-Well, the only character who's plight I understood, if not, per se, got, was Christopher Plummer's young, exuberent lover, played by Goran Višnjić. Throughout the movie, he keeps asking Ewan McGregor if "it's because [he's] gay" (for no particular reason in the beginning, then for a pretty good reason near the end, but never anything nefarious), and when visiting Plummer in the hospital, he jumps at the nurse justifying his right to be there before she even says anything. This particular aspect, not really any of the character's other, more important emotional points, is what stood out to me in a movie dominated by people with too many empty relationships. Because I imagine being openly gay in a world that only started, if not embracing, at least tolerating such a thing would leave one a tad paranoid, weary, etc.

Come to think of it, I've never seen a Polish movie before. Yay new horizons!

-Nonetheless, from my 21st century point of view, the strangers-meet-tension-slash-madness-ensues bit is fucking old.

-And what is it with low budget sixties movies and that--you know what? I just realized that I equate this style of camerawork with Night of the Living Dead (the original, for I know no other), specifically, when the zombies are breaking through the window for the billionth fucking time, and Ben and whatshisface, Jim the Geriatric High Schooler, Brad?, whatever, are knocking their hands, and for some reason, the curiously silent, paper mache/clay way the fingers fall apart just doesn't sit right with me. And now you know.

-Oh, how sorry I am, all five of you, that I can't write a review anymore, how dreadfully dreadful I feel. Except not really, because who's even reading this, anyway?

-Polish is one of those languages I just don't like listening to. To my lonesome American ears it's in the Scandinavian school of sounding like a rewinding tape. Also, there's a bunch of Polish kids I go to school with, and they're a bunch of dicks, so take that as you will.

-Extremely unlikeable protaganists, these people. Well acted, I should assume, but unpleasent.